1433
The illustrious days of Portugal were during the century and a half of
the dynasty termed the House of Aviz, because its founder, Dom Joao I.
had been grand master of the military order of Aviz.
His right to the throne was questionable, or more truly null, and he had
only obtained the crown from the desire of the nation to be independent
of Castile, and by the assistance of our own John of Gaunt, whose
daughter, Philippa of Lancaster, became his wife, thus connecting the
glories of his line with our own house of Plantagenet.
Philippa was greatly beloved in Portugal, and was a most noble-minded
woman, who infused her own spirit into her children. She had five sons,
and when they all had attained an age to be admitted to the order of
knighthood, their father proposed to give a grand tournament in which
they might evince their prowess. This, however, seemed but play to the
high-spirited youths, who had no doubt fed upon the story of the manner
in which their uncle, the Black Prince, whose name was borne by the
eldest, had won his spurs at Crecy. Their entreaty was, not to be
carpet--knights dubbed in time of peace, and King Joao on the other hand
objected to entering on a war merely for the sake of knighting his sons.
At last Dom Fernando, the youngest of the brothers, a lad of fourteen,
proposed that their knighthood should be earned by an expedition to take
Ceuta from the Moors. A war with the infidel never came amiss, and
was in fact regarded as a sacred duty; moreover, Ceuta was a nest
of corsairs who infested the whole Mediterranean coast. Up to the
nineteenth century the seaports along the African coast of the
Mediterranean were the hives of pirates, whose small rapid vessels were
the terror of every unarmed ship that sailed in those waters, and whose
descents upon the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy rendered life and
property constantly insecure. A regular system of kidnapping prevailed;
prisoners had their fixed price, and were carried off to labour in the
African dockyards, or to be chained to the benches of the Moorish ships
which their oars propelled, until either a ransom could be procured from
their friends, or they could be persuaded to become renegades, or death
put an end to their sufferings. A captivity among the Moors was by no
means an uncommon circumstance even in the lives of Englishmen down to
the eighteenth century, and pious persons frequently bequeathed sums of
money for the ransom of the poorer captives.
Ceuta, perched upon the southern Pillar of Hercules, was one of the most
perilous of these dens of robbery, and to seize it might well appear
a worthy action, not only to the fiery princes, but to their cautious
father. He kept his designs absolutely secret, and contrived to obtain
a plan of the town by causing one of his vessels to put in there as in
quest of provisions, while, to cover his preparations for war, he sent
a public challenge to the Count of Holland, and a secret message at
the same time, with the assurance that it was only a blind. These
proceedings were certainly underhand, and partook of treachery; but
they were probably excused in the King's own mind by the notion, that no
faith was to be kept with unbelievers, and, moreover, such people as the
Ceutans were likely never to be wanting in the supply of pretexts for
attack.
Just as all was ready, the plague broke out in Lisbon, and the Queen
fell sick of it. Her husband would not leave her, and just before her
death she sent for all her sons, and gave to each a sword, charging them
to defend the widow and orphan, and to fight against the infidel. In the
full freshness of their sorrow, the King and his sons set sail from the
Bay of Lagos, in the August of 1415, with 59 galleys, 33 ships of war,
and 120 transports; the largest fleet ever yet sent forth by the little
kingdom, and the first that had left a Peninsular port with the banners
and streamers of which the more northern armaments were so profuse.
The governor of Ceuta, Zala ben Zala, was not unprepared for the attack,
and had collected 5,000 allies to resist the Christians; but a great
storm having dispersed the fleet on the first day of its appearance, he
thought the danger over, and dismissed his friends On the 14th August,
however, the whole fleet again appeared, and the King, in a little boat,
directed the landing of his men, led by his sons, the Infantes Duarte
and Henrique. The Moors gave way before them, and they entered the city
with 500 men, among the flying enemy, and there, after a period of much
danger, were joined by their brother Pedro. The three fought their way
to a mosque, where they defended themselves till the King with the rest
of his army made their way in. Zala ben Zala fled to the citadel, but,
after one assault, quitted it in the night.
The Christian captives were released, the mosque purified and
consecrated as a cathedral, a bishop was appointed, and the King gave
the government of the place to Dom Pedro de Menezes, a knight of such
known fidelity that the King would not suffer him to take the oath of
allegiance. An attempt was made by the Moors four years later to recover
the place; but the Infantes Pedro and Henrique hurried from Portugal
to succor Menezes, and drove back the besiegers; whereupon the Moors
murdered their King, Abu Sayd, on whom they laid the blame of the
disaster.
On the very day, eighteen years later, of the taking of Ceuta, King Joao
died of the plague at Lisbon, on the 14th of August, 1433. Duarte came
to the throne; and, a few months after, his young brother, Fernando,
persuaded him into fitting out another expedition to Africa, of which
Tangier should be the object.
Duarte doubted of the justice of the war, and referred the question
to the Pope, who decided against it; but the answer came too late, the
preparations were made, and the Infantes Henrique and Fernando took the
command. Henrique was a most enlightened prince, a great mathematician
and naval discoverer, but he does not appear to have made good use of
his abilities on the present occasion; for, on arriving at Ceuta, and
reviewing the troops, they proved to have but 8,000, instead of 14,000,
as they had intended. Still they proceeded, Henrique by land and
Fernando by sea, and laid siege to Tangier, which was defended by their
old enemy, Zala ben Zala. Everything was against them; their scaling
ladders were too short to reach to the top of the walls, and the Moors
had time to collect in enormous numbers for the relief of the city,
under the command of the kings of Fez and Morocco.
The little Christian army was caught as in a net, and, after a day's
hard fighting, saw the necessity of re-embarking. All was arranged for
this to be done at night; but a vile traitor, chaplain to the army,
passed over to the Moors, and revealed their intention. The beach was
guarded, and the retreat cut off. Another day of fighting passed, and at
night hunger reduced them to eating their horses.
It was necessary to come to terms, and messengers were sent to treat
with the two kings. The only terms on which the army could be allowed to
depart were that one of the Infantes should remain as a hostage for
the delivery of Ceuta to the Moors. For this purpose Fernando offered
himself, though it was exceedingly doubtful whether Ceuta would be
restored; and the Spanish poet, Calderon, puts into his mouth a generous
message to his brother the King, that they both were Christian princes,
and that his liberty was not to be weighed in the scale with their
father's fairest conquest.
Henrique was forced thus to leave his brave brother, and return with
the remnants of his army to Ceuta, where he fell sick with grief and
vexation. He sent the fleet home; but it met with a great storm, and
many vessels were driven on the coast of Andalusia, where, by orders of
the King, the battered sailors and defeated soldiers were most kindly
and generously treated.
Dom Duarte, having in the meantime found out with how insufficient an
army his brothers had been sent forth, had equipped a fresh fleet, the
arrival of which at Ceuta cheered Henrique with hope of rescuing his
brother; but it was soon followed by express orders from the King
that Henrique should give up all such projects and return home. He was
obliged to comply, but, unable to look Duarte in the face, he retired to
his own estates at the Algarve.
Duarte convoked the States-general of the kingdom, to consider whether
Ceuta should be yielded to purchase his brother's freedom. They decided
that the place was too important to be parted with, but undertook to
raise any sum of money for the ransom; and if this were not accepted,
proposed to ask the Pope to proclaim a crusade for his rescue.
At first Fernando was treated well, and kept at Tangier as an honorable
prisoner; but disappointment enraged the Moors, and he was thrown into
a dungeon, starved, and maltreated. All this usage he endured with the
utmost calmness and resolution, and could by no means be threatened into
entreating for liberty to be won at the cost of the now Christian city
where his knighthood had been won.
His brother Duarte meantime endeavored to raise the country for his
deliverance; but the plague was still desolating Portugal, so that it
was impossible to collect an army, and the infection at length seized
on the King himself, from a letter which he incautiously opened, and he
died, in his thirty-eighth year, in 1438, the sixth year of his reign
and the second of his brother's captivity. His successor, Affonso V.,
was a child of six years old, and quarrels and disputes between the
Queen Mother and the Infante Dom Pedro rendered the chance of redeeming
the captivity of Fernando less and less.
The King of Castille, and even the Moorish King of Granada, shocked at
his sufferings and touched by his constancy, proposed to unite their
forces against Tangier for his deliverance; but the effect of this was
that Zala ben Zala made him over to Muley Xeques, the King of Fez, by
whom he was thrown into a dungeon without light or air. After a time, he
was brought back to daylight, but only to toil among the other Christian
slaves, to whom he was a model of patience, resignation, and kindness.
Even his enemies became struck with admiration of his high qualities,
and the King of Fez declared that he even deserved to be a Mahometan!
At last, in 1443, Fernando's captivity ended, but only by his death.
Muley Xeque caused a tall tower to be erected on his tomb, in memory
of the victory of Tangier; but in 1473, two sons of Muley being made
prisoners by the Portuguese, one was ransomed for the body of Dom
Fernando, who was then solemnly laid in the vaults of the beautiful
Abbey of Batalha on the field of Aljubarota, which had given his father
the throne. Universal honor attended the name of the Constant Prince,
the Portuguese Regulus; and seldom as the Spanish admire anything
Portuguese, a fine drama of the poet Calderon is founded upon that noble
spirit which preferred dreary captivity to the yielding up his father's
conquest to the enemies of his country and religion. Nor was this
constancy thrown away; Ceuta remained a Christian city. It was held by
Portugal till the house of Aviz was extinguished in Dom Sebastiao, and
since that time has belonged to the crown of Spain.